Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Learn about the latest key Microsoft OneDrive for Business innovations and a detailed update of Microsoft's strategy and roadmap through this below Microsoft Ignite Session, Watching this On-demand session is essential if you are using OneDrive for business in your Organization to enhance Collaboration and productivity.

Review the FAQs and also share your thoughts and ideas through UserVoice and the Microsoft Technical Community. Also, be sure to attend “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) session on OneDrive for Business in the OneDrive AMA groupon Wednesday, February 1, 2017 from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. PST / 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. GMT.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

Microsoft team made lot of exciting announcements during the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference last week, this whereto post is written to point you to the latest Cloud Platform Release Announcement blog post, that includes all of the Cloud Platform announcements aligned with Ignite event in a nutshell.

Microsoft team announced the Launch of Windows Server 2016 at Microsoft Ignite event last week, Following the announcement now you have the latest e-Book published on Windows Server 2016, written by either field experts or members of the product group, giving you the latest information on every improvement or new feature that is included in this version of Windows Server.

Microsoft team released five new Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) and Developer (MCSD) specialties. These credentials are aligned to Centers of Excellence, used by the Microsoft Partner Network to identify technical competencies that are widely recognizable by both Microsoft partners and customers.

To earn each of these credentials, you must first earn a qualifying Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) certification and, then, pass a single additional exam from a list of electives associated with the corresponding Center of Excellence.

The resulting MCSE or MCSD certification will be added to your transcript and will never expire. Instead, the achievement date will signify your investment in continuing education on the technology. Every year, you will have the opportunity to re-earn the certification by passing an additional exam from the list of electives, demonstrating your investment in broadening or deepening your skills in a given Center of Excellence. Each time you earn the certification, a new certification entry will be added to your transcript. This process will replace the existing recertification requirement of taking a specific recertification exam every 2 years (MCSD) or 3 years (MCSE) in order to prevent your certification from going inactive.

Also the existing MCSE and MCSD exams will be retired on March 31, 2017.

If you have already earned the required certifications, Microsoft team is aligning you to the new road-map as updated in the blog post, and if you are in the mid of your Certification Journey, then this is the right time to earn an MCSA certification and choose the appropriate elective exam and gain your MCSE / MCSD certification. Be sure to remember that you need to continue your learning and pass one of the elective exam every calendar year to re-earn the certification to keep your certification status current.

This new change has created mixed reviews in the Community, review the comments section of the Blog post to know the questions raised by fellow community members and answered by Microsoft, Submit your questions to get it clarified. Since this is the beginning we can see more updates to come in the next few days.

Saturday, October 01, 2016

Lot of new updates and enhancements are made to Office 365 and announced this week in the Microsoft's Ignite Conference 2016. Office Blogs is filled with lot of great posts on these new exciting announcements.

I curated some key posts below,

Begin with the cumulative announcement post that covers all the latest announcements at Ignite,

A new version of the Office 365 App Launcher, which will provide improved discoverability to new and recently used apps, additional customization options and search across all the services and applications you use in the Microsoft Cloud.

Review the On Demand Ignite videos to know more on these features in visual and turn on First release to enjoy most of these benefits and share your feedback in the right channel provided and as usual in Office 365 User Voice forum.

Innovation doesn't Pause / Stop with Microsoft Office 365, if you are still waiting to make your move to cloud or haven't experienced Office 365, you would miss some great features out there waiting for you that will for sure enhance your Employee / Personal productivity and take your business to the next level.

Microsoft team recently released the new Skype for Business Network Assessment Tool, which provides the ability to perform a simple test of network performance to determine how well the network would perform for a Skype for Business Online call.

The tool tests the connection to Microsoft Network Edge by streaming a set of packets to the nearest edge site and back for approximately 20s for a configured number of iterations. The tool reports:

Packet lossJitterRound-trip latencyReorder packet percentage

A Nice tool to assess your environment for Skype for Business calls quality.

Make sure you review the Microsoft Ignite On demand Sessions on Skype for Business to know more on the latest enhancements.

Update:

Microsoft team released updated version of the tool in December 2017, Starting around 12/15, older versions of the tool may stop working and will report an issue with the relay configuration. Download and update to the latest version accordingly.